Today, Sarah and Beth start a discussion about the potential Netflix-Warner Bros. merger and zoom out to talk about how our culture is driven by algorithms instead of ideas.
So much of our economy is moving from physical spaces where we work, gather, and play to a world where we do everything: buy/watch/stream/access/comment/communicate/date/work/dream through apps.
We spend a tremendous amount of our time and attention on screens. Today, we’re talking about what we’ve given up in the process, and how we want to treasure and celebrate the gems we’ve picked up along the way.
Topics Discussed
The Netflix, Warner Bros., Paramount Love Triangle
Art and the Algorithmic Economy
Outside of Politics: Sean Duffy wants you to look nice when you fly
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Episode Resources
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Send your Pantsuit Politics Bestie a Personalized Video Message from Sarah and Beth (save 10% with code HOLIDAYCHEER through the end of December)
Netflix (maybe) Buys Warner Bros.
Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros. Following the Separation of Discovery Global (Netflix)
Paramount Launches Hostile Bid for Warner Bros. (The Hollywood Reporter )
Golden Globes Nominations 2026: Complete Nominees List (The Hollywood Reporter)
The Power of Algorithms
Opinion | How My Retirement Savings Are Betraying America (The New York Times)
We Bought a 450-Pound Mystery Pallet Packed With Returned Goods From Amazon and Beyond. Here’s What We Found Inside. (Wirecutter | New York Times)
Kentucky’s $22 Million Basketball Roster Looks Like a Dud (Front Office Sports)
Opinion | Pay Attention to How You Pay Attention (Ezra Klein | The New York Times)
Bleak Friday Reel:
Sean Duffy on Airport Fashion
The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You: Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Unveils New Civility Campaign Ahead of Busy Holiday Travel Season (US Department of Transportation)
Episode Transcript
Sarah [00:00:10] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:11] This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today we’ll discuss what’s happening in entertainment with industry consolidation. Whether Warner Brothers Discovery ends up with Netflix or Paramount as a buyer. The trend line in media is clear and also feels like a microcosm of the slop economy. Outside of Politics, a lot of people are traveling over the holidays, and the Secretary of Transportation wishes we’d all step up our fashion game. We will discuss.
Sarah [00:00:38] This holiday season, we would love to be a part of your gifting. If you have someone in your life who loves the show, a great gift is a personalized holiday message from Beth and I. We used to do these on cameo, but now we do them through our own store websites so we can give you better, more personalized messages. If you want to get one of those before the holiday break, you need to have those orders in by this weekend. So check it out at pantspoliticshow.com.
Beth [00:01:05] Next up, let’s talk about mergers and slop. On Friday, Netflix and Warner Brothers Discovery announced an $82.7 Billion deal in which Netflix would purchase much of the company. And now Paramount has launched a hostile bid going directly to the shareholders bypassing the board for the entire company. That bid is worth a $108.4 billion and Sarah, I just think everything’s starting to sound like monopoly money. I don’t know how to process these numbers anymore.
Sarah [00:01:44] There’s like what, five whole people who own everything. I hate this.
Beth [00:01:48] Yeah.
Sarah [00:01:49] I hate this so, so much. I don’t even know where to begin with how much I hate it and what I hate about it. But let’s start with Netflix. I hate Netflix.
Beth [00:02:03] I like how this is like a festivity airing of the grievances. That’s what we’ve got going on today.
Sarah [00:02:07] Yeah. So I hate Netflix because Netflix is not an entertainment company. Netflix is a data company, just like everything else. It wants to know the most about you so that it can make the most money off of you. It’s not trying to make art. Now, it does stumble into making some art every once in a while. No doubt about it.
Beth [00:02:27] I think it stumbles into purchasing some art every once in a while.
Sarah [00:02:30] Yes. I think that’s probably an even better description. It’s just so disappointing because Warner Brothers has actually stumbled into making popular, mass-consumed artistic movies. Like the thing we all want. Not just another reboot of the Marvel Universe, not another Disney. We made it a cartoon and then we made it a live thing, and now we’re going to make it a cartoon again. I can’t do any more of that at all. And so it made Centers. I think it made that movie Weapons, which I haven’t watched yet, but Centers is great. Have you seen it?
Beth [00:03:08] No.
Sarah [00:03:09] It’s very scary. It’s about vampires.
Beth [00:03:11] Yeah, I don’t do scary movies, but I hear my husband and daughter think that Weapons is incredible.
Sarah [00:03:16] Yeah, weapons is good. Supposed to be good. Sinners is great and involves double Michael B. Jordan. What could possibly be wrong with that? And he plays twins. That’s what I’m referencing with the double Michael B. Jordan. And so it’s like we were starting to get somewhere. Like that movie made money. It had cultural impact. It’s nominated for a Golden Globe. We were going to go a place. And now what, Netflix or Paramount is going to acquire Warner Brothers and we’re going to be back to everything has to be seen through the lens of what’s the absolute most money we can extract out of this intellectual property.
Beth [00:04:01] I love your optimism that we were going a place. And I hope that that’s true. And I hope that we can keep going places. I just look at this whole scene and think, wow, there’s no one for me to root for here. There’s nothing right now in the media space that gives me a whole lot of optimism for where things are going, other than what independent journalists, filmmakers, artists are doing. And it is getting harder and harder to find independent creators. And I just sit back and look at all of this and think this amount of money is absurd. The objectives are absurd here. I don’t know what anyone cares about anymore. And I don’t really know what to do about it. Because you hear like, well, the Paramount merger may be more likely to go through because Jared Kushner’s investment company is part of that deal. And because they would buy the whole thing, which would include CNN. And now we have Saudi partners involved who would end up being owners of CNN. And you just think like, man, what are we doing? What are we doing here?
Sarah [00:05:08] Okay. Yes, to the independent creators. I mean, a lot of the movies that are being praised on these end of year lists were made by independent studios. I think a majority or at least a healthy amount of the movies nominated for Golden Globes are made by independent creators. But they’re impossible to find and impossible to see. So many of the movies in the list right now are movies I have never even heard of. And I love movies. I follow movies. But even I have a small independent theater in Paducah that very rarely shows these independent films. And if they do, they’re there for one weekend. You have one chance. I wanted to see the Jennifer Lawrence film that everybody’s talking about. It was there for one weekend. I couldn’t go during that time, so I didn’t get to see it. They don’t come to my Cinemark, my local like actual conglomerate movie theater. Even the movie showing up there, I haven’t even heard of sometimes. I’m like, what the hell is this? Like Anaconda with Jack Black. What is that? Like, I don’t even know. I just see these films and I’m like, what is this? You don’t have a chance to-- there’s no like adult movies. They pushed that eternity film Six Ways to Sunday for several weekends. I don’t want to see it. It’s not getting good reviews, but that’s there for three weekends in a row. And it just makes me so sad. I showed my boys Goodwill Hunting over Thanksgiving break. And I just think back to that time in my life when-- because like Griffin in particular really loves movies, really loves filmmaking. And I think back to that time in my life where there were these films that everyone was talking about. They were not some blockbuster action films. They were just quality filmmaking. They were at the theaters forever. Not only could you see them, you could see them more than once, which is a thing people used to do.
Beth [00:07:14] I definitely saw Goodwill Hunting more than once.
Sarah [00:07:16] Yeah. It’s just such a bummer. I don’t want this. I don’t want Netflix slop that you can put it on the background and not really pay attention to where the people say things like I went to the grocery store and this is who I encountered and this is what we said, so you could pick up what’s happening while you fold your laundry. I don’t want it. I don’t want it.
Beth [00:07:36] We have such a circular problem here too. I understand why people are going to the theater less. It’s really expensive to go to the theater. I understand why when you decide to shell out that money at the theater, you want something that you pretty well do know what it is. You’re not really taking a flyer because if you paid for a babysitter and movie tickets and concessions, you want something that is going to be in your wheelhouse. And that just perpetuates this situation. And when you always have Netflix as the competitor to that experience, I don’t know how consumer movement can make this better.
Sarah [00:08:17] I would like to advocate for not being in your wheelhouse all the time. You should see Sinners. I know you don’t like scary movies. You should see it. You’ll be okay. You’ll make it. You know what I mean? I would like to advocate for people to go outside your comfort zone. Do you know why we’re in a slop entertainment economy? It’s because nobody wants to see anything challenging or that they might not love or that they might not have to think about or not like the ending of. Like Goodwill Hunting was a challenging film at the time. There’s some things in there even now you watch it back and you’re like, ugh, I don’t know. But it can’t all be comfortable. I think we’ve just leaned so hard on entertainment, we forgot about the art. Art should be challenging and films can be art. TV shows can be art. They should ask questions. They should present interesting visions of the world. I mean, that’s what Sinners does. It’s a very interesting film. And it’s not just one more vampire flick. It has some interesting takes just like Buffy did. Buffy was a vampire movie and then a TV show, but it was asking interesting questions. It wasn’t just one more scary movie. I’m bummed. I’m just bummed out. I think we’ve all gotten to a spot where we think we want something we know or is in our wheelhouse, and then we go and we’re like I actually didn’t want to watch one more Marvel movie. Actually, JK, this sucked and I don’t want this anymore.
Beth [00:09:55] I think there’s a contrast. So I also agree that it’s good to do things that are uncomfortable or new or that take a risk. I do think there’s an economic component. And I think that we should not discount how expensive that experience is for the vast majority of people. Chad and I went to a comedy club we’d never been to before this weekend. And what I really loved about it is just that it was so clear that the people who owned it have a real vision for what they’re trying to do. The tickets were not super expensive. The concessions were not super expensive. It was very low-key concessions. Like we had some ruffles potato chips, and French onion dip that was marvelous. It was really good French onion dip. But what they kept pushing is like come back. We have these free nights where we just let new comedians workshop their stuff. We have nights where we’re letting new comedians film a 15-minute YouTube special because we want to help them. There was just a sense of like be in this with us because we want to be in it with these artists who are just getting started. And it might not be great, but you can still come and have a good time and be a part of something special. And so I loved it. I will be one of their most loyal customers. I’m positive from now on. Where can you have that kind of connection to art when it is all owned at this scale? And when every transaction is an amount of money that you can’t even get your mind around. And when you look at the ownership list and think, wow, the people running this do get you in kind of a conspiratorial place about what the agendas are, about what’s being pumped out through mass media.
Sarah [00:11:29] I just think it’s all so extractive. Like this is not about producing. This is about extracting as much attention and as much data and as much money as humanly possible. You can say a lot about the former studios and they were not perfect, but often there was a vision, especially after the golden age where the extractive came at the cost of the stars. That was a very extractive model with regards to the actors and actresses that participated in the studio system, particularly in the 40s and 50s. But it just feels like in every way, in all parts of our economy, it’s just well we need to make the top five percent inhumanly wealthy.
Beth [00:12:30] Yeah.
Sarah [00:12:31] And the only way to do that is to just continue to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. I was just reading a New York Times piece where this guy was trying to figure out where his 401k money was actually invested in. And it was like a government retirement fund. And it was like, oh, well, in Hong Kong and China and all these places that we say we don’t want to be invested, but they’re index funds. Index funds will melt your mind if you think about them long enough. Because it’s not a huge proportion of the American public that owns stock, but if you have retirement savings, it’s invested in the stock market that is more and more owned by either private equity or on the backs of the AI companies that are pouring money and it feels like a mirage. Like it all just feels like the way the debt is structured and the way the companies themselves valuate themselves. And actually the valuation is based on ghost companies that they set up to offload some of the actual money they’re spending and to cook the books, and there’s less and less regulation, and everybody just keeps consolidating and consolidating and consolidating. And meanwhile, everything just gets worse. I canceled Amazon Prime this year. And I think it was hard for a long time because it felt like there was like I got something for it. I got some convenience. Like there was an additive portion. But it got easier and easier because it doesn’t feel like that. It’s not even just the art, it’s the products, it’s the dynamic pricing. And you don’t really ever understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been watching this girl on Instagram who orders AI fake slop. And she’s like, I know it’s fake. I ordered it. And to watch what shows up compared to what she orders is wildly entertaining in the most depressing way humanly possible. I read this Wirecutter piece about where Wirecutter ordered one of the palettes of all the returned items. And they were like we thought it could be some fun stuff, but really it was just a sea of polyester clothing that people thought they were returning to be resold, but it wasn’t. It was just stuck in this palette and sold to this other person. And then there’s like this whole economy on the resale. Can you just put the melting face emoji over my face right now? That’s how I feel.
Beth [00:15:12] And when everything works this way, it’s not even maximizing anymore. It’s something different than that. It’s about stratospheric levels of wealth and just hoarding, I think. Then it all just becomes a race to get your piece of that. And we start to think about fairness as more people getting their pieces of that. I’m thinking about college basketball and money right now because if you are a Kentucky Wildcats fan, it was a very tough Friday night for us. They took a horrific loss to Gonzaga, and they’re a great team. No shade on Gonzaga, but the fan base in Kentucky is really, really upset right now in large part because they feel like the players don’t care. And it’s really easy to have a players don’t care narrative when you treat these players as professional athletes instead of student athletes. And that’s pretty much what they are now because this team, it’s been reported, has spent $22 million dollars on name, image, and likeness deals. Now, I don’t know if that number’s accurate. I don’t think anybody really does.
Sarah [00:16:23] Which is also part of the problem.
Beth [00:16:24] That’s part of the problem. But when you think like this is an eight-figure basketball team, and they will cash those checks whether they win or lose, it’s really easy for commentators to talk as they do about the basketball as a product. I heard that so many times. This product is unacceptable. This product is unacceptable. And Kentucky fans in Nashville during that Gonzaga game booed our players loudly over and over again. Unheard of.
Sarah [00:16:57] Wow.
Beth [00:16:57] Miserable. But the sentiment was like why don’t you care about this? Why aren’t you even putting any effort out? You can lose, but still have put some heart into it and tried. But what? They’re supposed to get paid in this range where they are professional athletes now and they’re supposed to have a heart for Kentucky basketball. Do you know what I’m saying? I just feel like money is devaluing everything, conversely. And the more money that’s involved, the more devalued the thing gets. I feel like Netflix is the epitome of this and that period where it’s just is it cake for days? Because we don’t care about what we’re trying to make. We’re just trying to find the formula that prints money for us and we’ll keep running with it.
Sarah [00:17:44] Yeah. I’m reading Evan Osno’s The Have and Have Yachts. And he starts talking about mega yachts and how that’s the most expensive thing you can buy, and how the people who work on these yachts with the mega wealthy they’re miserable because it’s like a constant competition of once you’ve made the biggest, someone else can get the biggest one. And no one’s enjoying it. It’s just a constant competition to get bigger and to get yours. And he had a chapter on private entertainment events and how it used to be that it was like washed up performers who would do these private events. And now everyone does them except for Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen. And he profiles Flow Ryder and he talks about it went from like rock and this counterculture, you don’t sell out to hip hop, where it’s you absolutely get a piece and you get yours and that’s what matters. And that was the predominant culture. And being rich was more important than being cool or being countercultural or being an artist. The ditty of it all, like the thing to be was to be influential and rich beyond all measure. And so they got to get theirs. They got to get the paid. And also they’re getting paid less because we’ve moved to algorithmic music through Spotify. So you’re not selling CDs and records to get rich or concert tickets, although that’s certainly how Taylor Swift has gotten rich and become a billionaire. But it’s about this totally other form of business and it’s another conglomeration; it’s another huge corporation that has taken up all the pieces of the puzzle and control so much. You sent me a reel that I shared on Instagram about all the different corporations that got acquired by private equity. They extracted all the value humanly possible from them, and now they’re bankrupt. Claire’s, Party City, like all kinds of places. I don’t want to get to a point where the only way you can buy anything is online. It’s depressing, it’s awful. You can only watch movies online. You can only watch TV online. You can only shop online. You can only eat through ordering your food online. And everything is dynamic pricing and algorithmic influence and sponsored recommendations. Get me out of here. I want out of here.
Beth [00:20:31] And I don’t know how to get out of here because when you have a government with regulatory bodies that also seem for sale. It’s just the reality right now.
Sarah [00:20:40] I think everything is for sale. I think beyond the regulatory bodies, members of Congress, you can purchase one of those if you’d like. Leader of an administrative bureaucratic agency, you can hand them a literal bag of money and it’ll be fine.
Beth [00:20:56] And so what do we do? Because if most media is controlled under these giant umbrellas, very few of them, and we cannot depend on regulatory bodies to have any kind of standard around these mergers. It is not the province of the court system to deal with an issue like this. I just think it has to be candidates running for office and starting to make a dent. And it’s not that I want the government to be a heavy-handed regulator. I understand the problem with government picking winners and losers. We are witnessing it right now in the starkest terms possible, right? Our government picks winners and losers every single day on an international level, and it’s bad. That’s not what I’m looking for. But some sense of what kind of economy do we want to have, I think is a real conversation. I think it’s part of why Donald Trump is in office. Because I think what people heard him saying about a manufacturing renaissance and making things in America again and America first, I think people heard him saying maybe some things need to get smaller. Maybe some things are going to be a little more expensive, but it’s worth it. But all of the actions of this administration belie that. I was just reading an Axios piece this morning about how his consistent big bet is on artificial intelligence. And making sure that it is hardly regulated at all and that we are going 200 miles an hour toward a digital future.
Sarah [00:22:34] Well, I think the way that this has played out with regards to actual movies since we talked about Netflix and Paramount, Paramount is interesting. So maybe we talk about that next. Because here’s the thing that’s so depressing to me, is we all say we want different but these movies are making butt tons of money. So Zootopia two brought in half a billion dollars over the weekend.
Beth [00:23:08] I like the way you said Zootopia with such distain.
Sarah [00:23:12] I didn’t even like the first Zootopia. That’s not even the point. Wicked: for Good, which has been routinely panned. Every critic said this movie is terrible. It’s too long. It’s too bloated. It’s too self-important. Don’t see it. Massive weekend. I’m like, what is happening?
Beth [00:23:34] The two parters really frustrate me because it’s like I bought the ticket; I’ve got to go on the ride. If I went to the first one, then I’ve got to go to the second one.
Sarah [00:23:42] Well, first of all you don’t. Because I didn’t. So let me release you from that expectation every day.
Beth [00:23:46] I haven’t gone yet either. I will. Ellen wants to see it. Ellen is down on it because she saw it on Broadway and she’s like, “The second act doesn’t need to be a whole movie.” I’m like that’s correct, Ellen.
Sarah [00:23:56] Correct. This is not a five hour and 45 minute piece of storytelling.
Beth [00:24:00] Yeah.
Sarah [00:24:01] But that’s what’s hard. In some ways, I look at the top grossing movies of the year and it’s like a time warp. It’s so wild. It’s like Karate Kid and old Disney movies and Superman. Like it’s wild. And then also the number one grossing movie globally is a Chinese film. So for a long time I felt like they were making movies that translated loosely to the Chinese audience because they wanted to get as much money as humanly possible. But that movie making industry, not only just being down in the West, but also building out its own movie making/ propaganda industry, they’re doing their own thing over there. So they’re not like an extractive audience. So I thought that would sort of put some negative feedback, but apparently not.
Beth [00:24:50] Apparently not. I understand that nostalgia has a place. I understand why toys marketed to my children are similar to the toys of my youth, because as a parent it’s going to make me excited and I’m the one with the money. I get it. And I don’t mind some of these movies. I go see a lot of them. What I am concerned about is a landscape where we don’t make things because we want to make them, but because we think they’re going to be popular. We get some newsletters for like digital creators that tell you what topics are performing on social media. And I always read those and think, “What a strange world this is where what I would want to do is see what everybody else is making that’s doing well and then just replicate that myself.” I’m not a creator anymore if I’m doing that; am I? I guess if you put your own spin on it, I understand that a lot of it is that you just bring yourself to it and that’s something new. And I don’t mean to devalue anyone’s work, but it is weird. It just feels wrong in my mind every time. And every time I think about TV when I see something like that, because when we started looking at television options we were told like, hey, when Chip and Joanna Gaines did well, everybody started looking for a goofy redheaded dude and his wife who has long hair and great skin and how can they go renovate some houses in a small quaint town? And I thought, man, this churn is really hard to see your way through. It just muddies everything.
Sarah [00:26:35] Well, the thing that is encouraging to me is that the conversation seems to be sharpening about what we all don’t like about this, even if it’s not showing up in the movie returns. But again, of course, people are going to Zootopia and Wicked for Good because that’s on six out of 10 theaters. And any of the independent films are not being advertised and people don’t know about them and they’re not showing. So it’s not like everybody’s choosing, there’s a six-month run of something like Goodwill Hunting or ET or these movies that we grew up in that stayed forever at the theaters for people to choose otherwise. So there is that. That’s the first thing. And I do feel like there’s a real clarification. Ezra Klein wrote a great column about the attention economy and going after companies that are algorithmic based, which Netflix absolutely is, and the fact that they are exploitive and they’re extractive of our worst instincts. Comparing them like to a public health campaign around cigarettes. They play to people’s base human instincts and the addictive tendencies. I love that he talked about they’re not showing you what you want to see. They could very easily ask you, what do I want to see? But they give us no control at all over what shows up in our Netflix feed, our Instagram feed, or any otherwise, right? And there’s a reason for that. And so I think that idea of like, okay, this black box algorithm is sucking the soul out of us, out of our entertainment, out of our art is very encouraging.
Beth [00:28:12] Totally agree. I was thinking as you were talking about the six of 10 theaters thing, that in our local theater, the movies, the small movies that tend to be there and have some screen times are Christian movies.
Sarah [00:28:25] Yeah. same here.
Beth [00:28:28] Because there is a powerful subculture that talk about those movies and will go and has a vision about supporting the people creating those movies. I’m not saying any of this as a criticism. I’m saying we need more of that. I think more movies made for a specific passionate fan base, where that fan base has a vision about supporting the thing. I think that gets me back to the comedy club. Where can you feel a part of something? And where are theater owners willing to find those subcultures and cater to them? And I think that if more people heard about how the algorithms work-- and the irony that this is on Netflix is not lost on me, but I wish everybody would watch The Social Dilemma because it has the best representation that I’ve seen of an algorithm. Just like a way to wrap your mind around how this is working, I’ve shown it to both of my girls when they started asking for Instagram. And they both watched it and said, “Okay, I’m good.” I think if we had that education paired with owners of actual in person spaces that cultivated a vision around what we’re trying to do here, that would get us somewhere.
Sarah [00:29:40] Yeah, I would really like it if our local theater-- maybe I’ll email and ask them this. Like if they just emailed me right now with all the Golden Globes and said, if you want to support your theater, here you go. This is whatever amount of money, a subscription, we’re going to show every single best picture winner, and this will get you into all of them. Here you go.
Beth [00:30:00] Yeah, that’s great. love that.
Sarah [00:30:01] I would buy it in two hot seconds. I’d be like, great. Just send me the schedule so I know. I don’t have to think, “Oh, yeah, I really want to see that one. I wonder where it’s playing. Do I need to see it when I’m in a big city?” That’s what I did last year. I just would have to go see movies when I’m in big cities because I couldn’t keep up. Like if they would just say, like, this is what we’re going to do, this is how you subscribe, we’ll tell you why these films are a big deal, blah, blah, blah.
Beth [00:30:22] And, hey, we need this many people to buy it if we’re going to do it. For it to make economic sense, is this what you want from us? Here’s the opportunity.
Sarah [00:30:32] The membership model for small artisan driven businesses. I know Lisa from The Bookshelf is doing something like this with her own bookstore. And I’m fine with that. I am fine with like a subscription model to this stuff if I know that I’m going to actually get what I want and what I’m like looking for as far as from some of this art. The other part of this that is encouraging to me is that there is another conversation that’s getting louder and louder, particularly around W. David Marks wrote a book called Blank Space, a cultural history of the 21st century that everybody’s been talking and writing about in certain online spaces, about how all these reboots and rehashes and formulaic algorithmic driven art-- I’m going to say entertainment actually-- entertainment, is people hate it. It’s like we haven’t had big cultural breakthroughs or big cultural moments in the 21st century because it’s muted, like it’s all profit-driven. He talks a lot about how we haven’t gotten that sort of counter-cultural gatekeeper model. I think David Brooks wrote about this when he talked about we used to have like novels that everybody read and everybody talked about, and these people were like cultural influencers beyond-- because the influencers became algorithmic driven. They weren’t artistically driven influencers, right? And so if you’re an influencer but you’re algorithmically based, well then again, you’re going to go after what’s popular and what’s comfortable and what makes a lot of money. You’re not going to be Andy Warhol pushing a totally different vision of a critique of pop culture. You’re not going to get the who doing an album cover about selling out or a Bruce Springsteen. You’re not going to get these like critique, rebels, for lack of a better word. And you definitely see that around movies or about music, but I think you see it in movies too, especially like in the 70s and these waves. I don’t feel like you can look back over the last 25 years and say like this was the wave of like real cultural critique. And then that these people pointed out the shallowness of the soullessness and we went in a different direction. I don’t feel like you can look over that. You can see viral trends, but you don’t see any real creation or innovation.
Beth [00:32:56] I think it’s out there. It’s just difficult to find.
Sarah [00:32:58] Yeah.
Beth [00:32:58] I think there’s some really, really great work out there, some really good ideas, some incredible creativity. It’s just very, very difficult to find because everybody is incentivized to ride the trend. You walk into the remaining bookstore in your community, if you live in a place like mine where there is basically a remaining bookstore and it’s going to feature the Reese Witherspoon selections. Well, I don’t need that feature. I’ve seen that. I want to know what’s out there that’s weird, that’s small, that I haven’t heard of. I want you to curate for me some experiences that I couldn’t find on any list of the top 10 movies of the summer or the top 10 books of the summer. I think that’s why, again, there are some independent creators who do really important work in this space by putting those things out there, but you got to find them too. It’s wonderful that so many people can create now. And maybe some of what we’re living is just the frustration of finding what’s being made. At the same time, to have that challenge on its own alongside a system that literally rewards you for using the same audio as everybody else, that’s really tough. And I like your transparency idea. Maybe we just need labeling for some of this stuff, too. What is the tech version of a food label? Tell me the ingredients here. What’s the goal? What’s the average time someone spends on your product? Famously the Netflix CEO said at one point, “We’re competing with sleep.” That stuff being out there and really visible and well understood, I think could help a lot of this.
Sarah [00:34:52] Yeah, I think it is chaotic. There’s so much to take in, but then you’re seeing the same things over and over and over again. And there’s really no reward under an algorithmic model for being weird. For challenging people, for saying something that makes people uncomfortable. And I think that’s where you’re really running up against it. It’s not that I think there aren’t artists out there. Of course, I think there are. But they are hard to find. And the reward system is not there that rewards that sort of creativity. I mean, why am I searching for the word creativity when that should be the most obvious word when we’re talking about art? I think that it just makes me sad because I think art can do so much. It can really help people. It can further conversations. It can open up possibilities that we couldn’t imagine for ourselves. And I think that when it just feels like everything is derivative-- not that art doesn’t have a massive component of derivative always and forever. Of course it does, but I don’t know. There is this grief I think I feel around especially my kids. And I think about how I interacted with art and how I was able to search out and follow my own interest and how hard it is for them to learn about TV and movies and what makes a good film and how often so much of what they’re watching and taking in is old stuff. I love Goodwill Hunting. I’m happy to show it to them, but I want them to have their own Goodwill Hunting.
Beth [00:37:01] Yeah. The benefit of all these companies and streaming is that they can go back and connect with some of what we connected with. And honestly, I view that as a real positive because those shows are paced differently. Those movies are paced really differently. They have a lot more dialog than what’s being produced today. They’re filmed differently, right? Graphically, the way your literal eyes engage with it is different. And I think that’s great. I’m glad that that’s out there and they’re able to get attached to it. I don’t want to be down on everything in this conversation. I think what I take away that has some momentum behind it, is one, people don’t like this. I loved in that Axios column this morning reading that if AI were a political candidate, it would be way, way underwater. People do not like it. It would not get elected. Okay. Well, we ought to be able to do something with that, right? We ought to be able to channel that into some kind of movement. And then the next thing is that this transparency idea, I think you’re right, that we really need to find some ways to force (I think you and Ezra Klein have it) these businesses that are algorithmically driven to tell us that and to tell us how that algorithm is designed and what the objectives are in as plain language as possible. Not in nonsense words that you have to have a a terminal degree to understand, but in ways that we can really follow to say, “Hey, this is what this is going to do to your brain and your attention span. This is what the company is going for. Are you in?” And some people will be in, and that’s okay. I just want the market to be big enough to have some things that that aren’t just the broadest mass appeal as possible.
Sarah [00:38:47] Well, the most interesting policy implication of this discussion around algorithmic media, again, which I consider Netflix to absolutely be a part of, is to exempt them from Section 230, which is this law we talk about all the time when it comes to the internet and social media. And the idea originally was like, yeah, you can’t be held liable for everything somebody says on a comment thread. We get it. There’s like a level of common sense. But we’re not talking about a comment thread. We’re talking about something you control. You control the algorithm. You control what people see. You control what gets platformed. And so why should you have no liability for those choices? I think that’s an excellent policy debate to have. I think that algorithmic media (I don’t even want to use social media) it’s like what, 7% of Instagram comment is actually based on your friends. I mean, this is algorithmic media and they should be held responsible for the ways they control that algorithm, including but not limited to a Marvel universe that is too big that nobody wants to participate anymore. So I think that there are policy implications. I think that there are business model implications. I agree that the nostalgia is key and everybody thought it was adorable when Felix was totally into Elvis. But now that I know that it was basically driven by wanting to keep the most value in his music for the people that own the intellectual property, am I a little grossed out by all of it? I am. Maybe it would have been better for Felix to find, I don’t know, a new artist who’s still alive who are not trying to make sure the catalog that the private equity people purchase for $200 billion keeps its value. I think there are absolutely consumer choices to be made here. I think there are business model, re-evaluations, industry reckonings that absolutely are going to continue to happen in Hollywood and LA, and policy implications for all of this.
Beth [00:41:08] As we approach the holiday season, a lot of people are traveling. Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, has made a centerpiece of his public profile being this initiative to get people to dress nicer at the airport. He says that when we dress nicer, we act nicer, we say please and thank you more. It brings out our best selves. Now, setting aside the fact that I am personally disinterested in any tips on decorum from members of this administration, we thought we would chat about whether that correlation exists in our opinions.
Sarah [00:41:41] We can’t reject it just because Sean Duffy said it. I know there’s always a temptation to be like it’s somehow connected to Trump. That means it’s all stupid and bad. First, let me say that as someone who flies quite a bit, I understand the completely justified reaction, which is they’ve made flying more and more uncomfortable. So, of course, people want to wear more and more comfortable clothing. Agreed. The seats are smaller, the lay overs shorter, the leg room tiny, the seats themselves are hard. They’re definitely, again, just like what we were talking about before. Extracting from a majority of people so that the people in the front of the plane can just have more and more luxurious experiences, including but not limited to not even having to go through the same entrance, the same security line. Some of these airports and airlines it is a truly bifurcated experience. There is a luxury experience. It’s like the Disney example we talked about. You can pay a butt ton of money and get the luxury experience, and then the rest of us plebes get extracted and extracted and extracted from. So I get that. There’s a big critique of airlines. And also I’m going to continue to quote our very [inaudible] listener that clothing communicates. It just does. Clothing communicates. And I think there is some truth to the fact that when people dress in a way that is totally and completely consumed with their own comfort, it fosters a perspective that centers yourself in every... If the only thing that matters is my comfort when I’m dressing, then the only thing that matters in the way I interact with everyone on planet Earth is my own comfort. And I think those two are connected.
Beth [00:44:00] Not surprisingly, I see this differently. I think that absolutely there is a connection to everything becoming slop like we were just talking about. If you’re just extracting for value, then you’re getting worthless products. And I do think for the average person, the distinction among airlines is being lost.
Sarah [00:44:20] Yeah.
Beth [00:44:20] The experience is so similar airline to airline. You go through an algorithmic process to find the best prices for tickets. So we aren’t loyal anymore either. Who has an incentive to create a distinctive experience? To me, the ideal would be you care about this? Great. This is the airline that cares about it too. This is the airline where you’re going to get served really nice food. You’re going to get a drink in a glass, whatever. Like if you want that kind of experience, this is for you. If you want to sleep on the plane, here’s the best airline to fly. It would be nice to have options. We are supposed to be a competitive marketplace, and it would be cool if the marketplace felt competitive.
Sarah [00:45:00] Doesn’t though.
Beth [00:45:01] It doesn’t feel competitive. And that absolutely drives a lot of cynicism just walking around as a consumer every day. I also think how you dress for the flight matters. It matters a ton. Like what time is the flight? Where are you going? Do you need to sleep on the plane? What are the circumstances here? I think there’s room for judgment. It’s not that I think what you wear doesn’t matter at all. Of course it does. And of course it has a social component. And I do get really annoyed by people who wear vulgar t-shirts. There’s a consideration of like if I’m getting on an airplane, they’re going to be all kinds of people on that airplane. And I want to think about just not projecting hostility toward anyone when I get on an airplane. Nobody needs that in any kind of transit. But also transportation is a human need. And it does not bother me if somebody comes on an airplane in pajama pants, if they’re going to sleep on the plane, or if it’s an a 5 a.m. flight or whatever. I just think that this is a silly thing for the Secretary of Transportation in particular to promote. And I think it’s something that if somebody wants to get serious about it, it’d be a great way for an airline to distinguish themselves from the pack.
Sarah [00:46:21] Yeah, but here’s the thing, when people want to wear pajama pants on a plane and they want to sleep, and then you get the people who are like taking off their socks and putting their feet on the seat in front of them because again what have we prioritized and what have we told people? What we’ve told people is the most important thing is that you get to do exactly what you want to do when you want to do it. And then we get the people clipping their toenails on the plane and putting their God knows what body part anywhere they want to get comfortable because their comfort is the priority. And I just think when Sean Duffy said this, I thought, well, you know what, we tried the bureaucratic approach, the competency expertise approach. We tried Pete fining the shit out of people for cursing and abusing airline staff. Because this isn’t just about you’re making your fellow passengers uncomfortable. What they’re really trying to get at is that the abuse of other human beings in the airport and on the airplane. And Pete did the fines. I don’t know if the actual incidences of abuse have gone down, but I can only assume it’s still an issue or Sean Duffy wouldn’t be talking about it. And I thought, I really wish Pete had put these two pieces together because I don’t love it coming from Sean Duffy, but I do think there is a hunger when addressing something that affects all of us in a common space and airports and airplanes are like one of the last common spaces. They are a place where a broad-- that’s why I love the airport so much. I love to see that broad swath of humanity. And you know I think there is absolutely a connection to the entertainment conversation, a connection to our education conversations, a connection to our just broad cultural conversations right now that I want both. I want you to say here’s the process we’re going to put in place to address something that we all see as a problem when it comes to human behavior in our society right now, which we all agree this is an issue. Bipartisan issue the way people are acting and mistreating and really goes beyond airplanes. It’s like retail staff and restaurant staff, okay? We exist in an economy of slop and we treat each other like slop. And I want a two pronged approach. I want a bureaucratic procedural approach and then I want this broader behavioral approach. I want leaders to say we don’t act like this. We don’t do this. This is unacceptable. Now, again, is Sean Duffy the best messenger for that? Absolutely not. The cruelty and just shameless behavior of this administration is part of the problem and has been part of the problem for the last 10 years. But I do think when he said this, I thought, this is a thing I’m hungry for. I’m hungry for leaders to say we’re not just going to put in a procedural policy fix. There’s something else that we need here. And this is how I’m just going to say this would help, or this is how we can call it out, or this is how we can address it. I just don’t love the messenger, but I like this approach.
Beth [00:50:01] Let me try to say what I agree with in what you just said, because there is a lot. I agree I think we need leaders who ask things of us. In every space. I think a lot of people are ready for someone to say, “Here’s what would help from you. So do this.” I think it is right to focus on how crew members are treated and service for people in general.
Sarah [00:50:23] Yeah.
Beth [00:50:23] I think this loops back to affordability. I think one reason people act ugly is because everything is expensive. And so if you’re doing the thing, you think, well, I’m going to do the thing and I’m going to do it however I want to because I spend a lot of money on this thing. And I think that air travel is certainly one of those things. I think that where I find some allergy to what to this approach is just connecting it to clothing necessarily. And probably because I worked in a very white-collar environment for a long time and I saw people act real ugly in suits. So in my mind, dressing a certain way does not necessarily add to civility and kindness and empathy for others. It is also about power. And some people take that power on and treat other people extremely poorly because they’ve dressed themselves up a certain way. So I just think this connection, to the extent that it exists at all, is pretty tenuous and fragile. But I am here for saying, can we all work together to treat people with more respect in these spaces? Our fellow passengers and the crew. And not to continuously be a commercial for this commonwealth comedy club that we went to, but I loved that we opened with a message from an owner saying, “We don’t heckle here. We don’t do it.” I think I thought that was great. Like that felt like leadership to me. You come into my space, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. And also you don’t get to be here and do whatever you want. We have some norms. These are the things that we want you to do. I think that’s fantastic. And I could even hear that from Sean Duffy. But I think the clothing part is vain and elitist and tone deaf from him right now. That’s what I think about it.
Sarah [00:52:01] I just think norms when you talk about individual behavior, appearance is just low-hanging fruit. It’s why you they tell people like if you can do nothing else, get out of bed and take a shower and brush your hair. It’ll help. I tell my kids all the time. I know you’re tired. Start doing this, it will help. I do think there is a it matters. I think it matters. And I don’t think just your appearance or your clothing is vain. And I think it is one of the ways that we make choices every single day that really matter. One of my New Year’s resolutions this year was to not buy any fast fashion. And it has been enormously impactful. It’s one of the first New Year’s resolutions that I’ve hardcore stuck to all year long in a long time. And it’s really impacted me and helped me think about. It’s helped me look at the fast fashion I’ve bought in the past and when I wear it now and think about it differently. I just think the way we present ourselves to the world it’s one of the like most impactful consumer choices when you really start to make different choices about how you spend your money and what you put on your body. It’s so cellular, right? Like how you do your hair or what you do to your face or your jewelry or your tattoos or your clothes or your shoes, to me it’s like the nexus of individualism and community conversation in so many ways that still really has impact that I think that’s why I’m like, well, we can start here. I’m not saying it’s going to fix everything, but I think it is a good place to start exercising that muscle again and remember that we are not islands, and that if we put a crude offensive phrase on our t-shirt and then it’s around children, that matters. And if we can say, well, the way I dress myself is not going to involve giving more money to these slop conglomerates that own everything, that matters. And if we say I can put on a piece of clothing that makes me feel just a little bit better, just a little bit better about being in the world, and maybe I’ll treat the next person I encounter a little bit better. And I’ll see that well I’ve worked a little bit harder to get dressed, and I’ll notice that the flight attendants always look really nice, and maybe I’ll make that connection. And this is very optimistic. I’m just saying. I do think this is like a place where we make so many decisions still. You know what it is? You know why it is? Because it’s not online. Because it’s in the world. It’s how we are existing in our lived existence. And so I’m like, well, hell, let’s just start there.
Beth [00:55:05] I think that where I struggle anytime we talk about this, the fast fashion, any of it, is that it’s not that I disagree with you. It’s that I don’t feel it with the intensity that you feel it. And I want to make room for all of the experiences people are having. Sometimes you get on an early flight. Chad was supposed to fly out at 6 a.m. This morning, right? If I’m getting on that flight with a newborn to go visit my family, just getting there is a lot. This is how I feel about church too. For some people, just getting there is a lot. I don’t care what they wear, I’m so glad they’re there. You know what I mean? And some of those people will be kinder and more respectful to a flight attendant than anybody wearing a jacket in first class. And so I think that when a message comes at this scale, when the Secretary of Transportation for the whole ass United States is saying, I don’t think you should wear pajama pants on a plane ever. And I think “Put on a polo shirt and a jacket,” as I saw him say in an Instagram reel that I watched before we started recording, it just feels to me like he’s unaware of the scale that he’s communicating on. And it’s better instead of saying we want everybody to think about their clothing choices this way, we could start with the main thing. We want everybody to be cognizant that you are not alone on an airplane. And that, as they say every time, the crew members are first there for your safety and your comfort cannot intrude on other people’s comfort. Start with the universals instead of sending out this message that makes some people feel terrible in a space that already prices so many people out of the space. And I just really worry, especially with the dim view of the economy people are justifiably feeling right now, that the more we talk about things in an everybody way that require like a big layout of cash, that we’re going to lose that common community spirit that we’re going for. You know what I mean?
Sarah [00:57:21] I do. I just think it’s already lost. I think it’s the paradox of scale. I think in an effort to speak to exactly what you’re saying, we have lost the community spirit. You can’t speak to a community without universalizing. And the act of the paradox of universalizing is of course you will leave out some people’s experiences in a country of 330 million people. And I think that’s what we’re struggling with right now. We’re so big and we have so many resources and everything’s so complex. I mean, back to the article I was talking about with Wirecutter in the first segment with the returns. The reporter goes and hunts down. Because she gets the whole package, she knows these people’s names, addresses. And it’s like somebody bought something because their body changed after a mastectomy and they really thought they were returning it and somebody else was going to purchase it. When you get into the universal of it, it’s not like everybody’s like, fuck it, return it, I don’t care. It’s not like everybody that’s getting on a plane in pajama pants is treating mistreating flight attendants, right? But when we say we don’t want to lose the complexity of everyone’s experience, then we lose or I think we have lost the ability to speak in an impactful way to the community. You know what I’m saying? It has to be a big message. Pete did that. It’s not like Pete wasn’t saying they’re there for your safety. He articulated exactly what you just said.
Beth [00:59:07] And I think he did it really well. And I approved.
Sarah [00:59:09] But I did it help? I don’t know. Like, did it get all the way better? I think people’s behavior has improved somewhat. But I said a couple months ago on this show that the attitude out there is you owe me everything and I owe you shit. So we’re all still feeling that vibe. And I think there has to be some, I don’t know, impact. There has to be some oomph to the statement. There has to be like we’re going somewhere, not everybody try their hardest. I think we’ve hit the limit of everybody try their hardest.
Beth [00:59:44] I do too. I also think we’ve hit the limit though of trying to make everything a PR campaign and wait for their results to succeed. There has to be some grit about it. Some smaller segmentation. The community has to be smaller so you can give a lasting message and enforce it. That’s why I think the solution to this is an airline with a dress code. I think that’s the way to get to this. If this is important to you, I’m really sad if there’s a big enough population that is being underserved.
Sarah [01:00:15] But the dress code is not important to me. What’s important to me is that people behave as if they are a part of a whole. I don’t want to pay more so that everybody wears a polo. That’s not what I’m arguing. That’s not what I want. As someone who cares about this deeply, what I want is for everyone to remember that they’re not a damn island and that the number one priority at all time is not their own. I mean, Ezra gets into a debate about progressivism and liberalism in this new column. Like liberalism said everybody should pursue their own happiness until they bump into somebody else. And I do think that we have, in fact, reached the outer limits of that.
Beth [01:00:56] Agreed. And what I’m saying is if what is really important to you is the way we behave, not the clothes, I think the clothes are a a poor way to get to that. I don’t think A plus B equals C with Sean Duffy’s message.
Sarah [01:01:10] Yeah, I just think it’s a good start. If someone else has another good start, I’m interested. But I do think a good first step, not A plus B equals C, just a first good step. If we’re going to talk about, which is something you and I have been talking about a lot moving into 2026, the civic virtue, the social ecology, our culture, just going analog, all of this is a part of the whole, right? And if it is, which I believe it to be, and we have to start taking baby steps, keeping the pajama pants in the pajama drawer seems like a real easy first baby step to me. It just seems like a thing we could start. It doesn’t mean we’re going to throw you in jail. It doesn’t mean we’re going to charge you more. It just means someone stood up and said we could stop wearing pajama pants outside of our bedrooms. And we could just start there. Just start there.
Beth [01:02:10] Yeah, and I think we could start there and not get the result we’re looking for. But here we are. And he is starting there. So we will see if it has the effect he’s looking for.
Sarah [01:02:18] We will see. I mean, this is not the leader I’d hoped. So I hope we don’t reject any large cultural-- I mean because he everything they do involves an element of shame, which I don’t think is the answer. I think aspiration, not through the lens of greedy influence, but aspiration through the lens of what if we all made it easier on each other to be together in community? What if we all just tried just a little bit harder? Maybe not easier. Maybe if we all just tried just a little bit harder in the ways that we can, and maybe your way wouldn’t be how you’re dressed. Maybe your way would be somewhere else. I’m into that message. I think this is a shit messenger, but I’m into that message.
Beth [01:03:03] That is the rub that I’m feeling though, because I do want people to feel part of a whole and I do want us to be more connected to each other. And I worry that talking about how people dress is a barrier to that instead of an invitation to that. And so that that’s where I feel conflict about this. Again, it’s not that I really disagree with you about anything. It’s that I just struggle to put the strategy with the goal.
Sarah [01:03:30] Well, so what would be your easy entry?
Beth [01:03:34] An easy entry? That’s a great question. I don’t know that I have an easy entry. I think prioritizing these things in small spaces is what I would like to see first. I would like for like that comedy club is like my easy entry, right? Like a place where you come in and as a matter of course people say, I want my space to be distinctive and mine, and I take ownership for it. So I like codes of conduct. I like when I’m at an arena or a stadium and they come out and they say, “Here’s how you’re going to behave here. And if anybody around you is not behaving this way, this is the number you call and we’ll help you.” I was in a restaurant recently and I loved in the bathroom on the door, there was a sign taped up that was like, “Hey, are you on a first date that’s not turning out the way that you thought it would be? You order this drink and we’ll help you.” I thought that was so genius because it said, “You matter to us. You’re part of something because you came in here and we want to help you if you’re in a difficult situation.” So those are my easy entry points. Just people who have an opportunity in a physical space to take ownership of that physical space. I think doing that is phenomenal.
Sarah [01:04:40] Yeah, but what I’m saying is people take ownership of their own behavior. That sign is the opposite of that. It says don’t extract yourself from a first date that’s not going away. You can do it. Here’s some tips and tricks to get out of a first date that sucks. It’s saying we’ll rescue you. Do you see what I’m saying? Because I am talking about being a part of the whole, but I’m really talking about showing up as a part of the whole who paradoxically understands that the only person they can control is themselves and asking you to do that.
Beth [01:05:14] I think those two things are always feeding each other because that sign might remind someone, oh, I don’t have to stay. Not that I need to be rescued, but I don’t have to stay. Someone has reminded me of my own agency here. I feel like if those two things aren’t moving in harmony, we get the dysregulation that we have everywhere right now. And it’s like you said, this message from Sean Duffy is just a message. You’re not going to get fined. You’re not going to get kicked off the plane. But he is saying this is what I think is important. I just disagree with him about its importance. But I think people articulating what’s important to them in spaces that they have some modicum of control over is helpful to motivating individual behavior, to motivating us to take responsibility for ourselves and how we show up there.
Sarah [01:06:02] Yeah, because it is like a circular I want you to participate in the whole by taking responsibility for yourself. I understand it is hard. It’s hard to be a person in the world and community with other people. And it’s hard to decide. But I do think this is what maybe never quite gets articulated. It is hard to decide. It is hard to act. It is hard to be in a marriage, a parent, a friend, a business, anywhere where you do have to sacrifice your wants for the needs of the group. And I just feel like maybe we all need some more practice as that because I think we have gotten to a place, and I think some of this is the slop economy, the algorithm that tells people and the technology companies that tell you can maximalize. You don’t ever have to make a sacrifice; you don’t ever have to do something hard. We will create a product or a software or an algorithm that will let you follow your bliss into this miserable existence of slop. It’s not actually bliss. It’s a trap.
Beth [01:07:18] I think it’s just tricky though to have any message that’s for all of us.
Sarah [01:07:24] Yeah.
Beth [01:07:25] Like I personally have worked--
Sarah [01:07:26] Yeah, that’s how we got the algorithm.
Beth [01:07:28] Yeah. I personally have worked really hard to not constantly think about other people around me and to realize that, like, I have an opinion here too, and my comfort does matter at all. And I don’t need to be a doormat on an airplane if somebody next to me is taking up two and a half seats or whatever. So we’re never all going to be in the same place about anything. And that’s why I think, especially depending on the scale at which you’re speaking, thinking about like what am I really going for here? What is the most precise message that has an ask that I can apply to as many people as possible is worth giving some consideration to. I’m not shocked that Sean Duffy didn’t spend a whole lot of time workshopping this, but here we are.
Sarah [01:08:15] This is all a part of the whole, this whole entire conversation. If we do not like the way the algorithm has given us the capacity to formulate to each individual’s desires, if some of the answer I think is smaller communities, smaller messages, I’m happy with that. But we’re about to celebrate our 250th anniversary next year. And so some aspect of this has to be what are we doing together as a country of 330 million people? How do we have messages that inevitably will be big enough to speak to the whole, (and it is a big complicated whole) but won’t be perfect, won’t be perfectly individualized, will inevitably leave people out, they’ll be in different spaces. Do we still think it’s worthwhile to have those messages? Do we still think it’s worthwhile to do something big and complicated as a group? I think that’s what’s we’ve followed this individualization through health insurance and entertainment to the point where we have these this massive conglomeration. You know what I’m saying? We’ve gotten bigger in an effort to individualize to everybody.
Beth [01:09:35] I don’t know that I agree with that. I think that a complexity about what speaks to the whole in America is that America was founded on individualism and the idea that you come here and you live your life in the way that you think will help you pursue happiness, right? That we will uphold your individual rights. So it’s baked into us. It’s baked into our identity. That sense of you do your thing is who we are and is the message that could speak to all 330 million of us. I think that what I don’t agree with about individualization is the root of all of our problems around healthcare, insurance, entertainment, all of these spaces that we’re identifying these problems is what we’re getting, I think, especially through an algorithm, isn’t to me what we desire. It’s what hooks us. It’s a path for us to go down deeper into. It more and more reduces us to one characteristic that makes us a great consumer. And we’re losing the richness of, oh, that’s just like a part of me. And sometimes it’s a big part of me, but sometimes like it’s a tiny part of me. Sometimes it’s not part of me at all. Maybe I outgrow it. Maybe I evolve in a different direction. But we’re like being hooked in on whatever that essential characteristic is or that set of essential characteristics. So I think that we’re being sold for you, for you, for you. That’s what the pages are called. For you, for you, for you. Curated, right? But it’s not. It’s for them, for them, for them.
Sarah [01:11:08] Well, and that’s think about it. That’s what I was going to say. It’s like think about like in the pursuit of the for you, they know us better than ever before. They know so much about us.
Beth [01:11:22] That they start to create us.
Sarah [01:11:24] Yeah, and also, well, that they know so much about us but it’s not like that has resulted in some proliferation of massive competition and niche markets. They have niche advertising, but I don’t feel like I’m getting this incredible utopia of even products that are the precise fit for the need I have as Sarah Stewart Holland, right? They’ve shrunken us all down in a way to scale so that no one’s happy. My for you page is so weird, you guys. It is weird. I guess I watched a couple like medical trauma, so now it’s always someone who’s experienced some sort of facial harm. I don’t know. And my husband’s is weird. Everybody’s is weird. Nobody’s just like highly individualized to speak to make their soul sing. Like it’s repulsive. And that’s everything. Like everything has become-- because they want to again extract at the scale so that we just become data. Like we’re just a number, we’re just a zero or a one to plug into the XYZ algorithm. And so we’ve lost our humanity. There’s no humanness in anything. From Netflix, to the airport, to the movie theater, and that’s before we ever get to actual artificial intelligence.
Beth [01:13:05] And I think it’s all out there; it’s just being drowned in crap. I do think it’s out there. I think people are doing some amazing things. It’s just really hard to find them.
Sarah [01:13:15] Yeah.
Beth [01:13:16] And so maybe one of our New Year’s resolutions is just we help each other find them, you know? When we find a gem, we become a walking billboard for that little gem.
Sarah [01:13:24] Yeah. Except that then they get drowned in algorithmic driven virality and then they...
Beth [01:13:30] Not too effective of a billboard. We had friends who moved here from Utah and they always talk about how when they tell their friends about where they live, their friends back home, they’re like, “Oh my God, maybe we should move to northern Kentucky.” And they’re like, “Oh, you really shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t do that.” Yeah, because there’s a scale problem with everything. Well, I’m sure we’ll continue to talk about all these issues. And I really appreciate in a world where you have so many choices of what to listen to, that some of you still choose to listen to a podcast from independent creators that is not mass market appeal. So thank you so much for being with us and allowing us to irritate you sometimes and get on your nerves and push and challenge and get things wrong. We’re super grateful always. We’ll be back with you on Friday for another new episode. Until then, have the best week available to you.
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Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.
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I would also like to add my hot take that part of the problem (I think) with movies (and everything) is that we live in a society without constraints. We don't have to make our clothes last, so we don't know how to mend and fix them (and we don't make clothes that are worth mending and fixing). We don't have to fit a tv show into a 30 minute segment with commercial breaks, so the editors cut nothing. Movies don't have to film on location because of CGI so they don't have to create sets and scripts that require your imagination or write around problems or issues because they can just edit things in or out. You don't have to be able to draw to be an animator. You don't even have to code efficiently because there's a limited amount of data on your hard drive.
OF COURSE there are constraints - but they're invisible to us. We don't see the people working in slave-like conditions for 1000 hours a week in the factories in Vietnam to make our shirts, so we don't have to contend with that as long as they're cheap. We don't see the data centers that power our computers sucking up our water and ticking the energy bills up up up. We don't think about the little hands that mine the silicone and lithium that power our devices. So we don't honor their sacrifice by making phones, clothes, or anything that will last, we jut throw them away and get the next one. Even our food, it's mass produced slop that has all of the nutrients extracted, recombined and added back in with enough salt and fat to reach our bliss point. But we don't see the way it depletes soils through monoculture and is slowly but surely using up all of the abundance we have on this planet. We don't think about the landfills full of crap that we threw away or the green house gasses that they release. Just get it here tomorrow with overnight delivery from Amazon. I think there is something about a "nutrition" label of sorts on ALL THE THINGS that would make us think twice. Do you really need a touch screen controller on your car? Do you really need to upgrade to the next phone? Maybe you could repair that thing instead of getting a new one? (I feel like I'm letting my radical freak flag fly, but there's more - just wait till I start on my thing about turning all our yards into grass and using our DRINKING WATER to water a plant that we look at, cover it in pesticides, and also most of us are allergic to - what is WRONG WITH US?!?!).
Ok, I'm commenting as I listen to the episode, so I'm a little bit chatty today. Also, new subscriber here, so y'all have now given me a platform to write down all the things I usually say out loud to no one as I drive around listening. 😆 All that to say...
RE: Airport dress code - Let's not conflate clothing with character. The person wearing sweatpants on a flight for personal comfort doesn't automatically equal the person who clips their fingernails, takes off sweaty socks, wears strong fragrances, or brings strong smelling food onto a plane (all pet peeves of mine!).
Personal comfort and community compassion aren't mutually exclusive.
Someone can dress for airplane comfort - stretchy pants for lengthy sitting, shoes that easily slip off for going through security - and still draw a big distinction between something that only affects them personally and all those other things you mentioned that are part of having mutual respect when sharing space with your fellow man.
Gathering with the general public has always meant some level of inconvenience and self-sacrifice - honestly, I think that's good for us. I'm just very doubtful that the prioritization of "airplane chic" advances that ideology.
One could even argue that if I'm comfortable in my clothes, I'm a more pleasant traveler and in a better mood to endure the stress of the travel experience. Pretty sure Nancy Mace was wearing a suit. 🤔